Can Humans Live Past the Age of 115?

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Some experts think we’ve reached our maximum life span, but they say research and lifestyle choices could change that.

Humans
shouldn’t expect to live past 115 years of age.

That’s
according to a study published earlier this month in the
journal Nature.

The authors analyzed
the death rates of humans from 40 different countries. The data showed that by
the mid-1990s, “improvements in survival with age tend to decline after
age 100, and that the age at death of the world’s oldest person has not
increased since the 1990s,” according to the study.

The results suggested that maximum life span for humans has
peaked at 115 years.

Aging 15
years past the century mark doesn’t sound too bad. But even with advances in modern
medicine, have we yet discovered our proverbial fountain of youth?

A complex topic

Healthline
turned to two prominent experts in the field of aging to get some perspective.

Can humans
live past 115 years of age, and if so, what will it take for us to achieve
that?

Not
surprisingly the answer is as complex as the aging process itself.

“The average
life span will likely extend out, maybe to 122,” said Kim D. Finley, Ph.D.,
associate professor of molecular biology at San Diego State University. “I
don’t know if we could get to 150. It’s hard to predict because no one has.”

Dr. Leonard
Guarente, director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Science of Aging Research at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Healthline he thought the
report’s methodology was solid.

If there are one or two technical breakthroughs it could change the calculus on how long people live in the future.

Dr. Leonard Guarente, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“[But] it’s
not prospective,” he said. “If there are one or two technical breakthroughs it
could change the calculus on how long people live in the future.”

Both experts
agree that scientists are just beginning to truly understand what happens at a molecular
level in our bodies when we age.

Promising
research and treatments do exist, they added. But science alone won’t provide a
magic pill to expand the human life span.

That’s
because the genes we inherit and the environment we live in hold an enormous
influence on our life span outcomes.

What’s more,
they argued, all this talk about maximum life span is a disservice to people.
Instead, our priorities should be about extending our health span. How long we
can sustain an active and healthy lifestyle?

That’s where
scientific breakthroughs will produce the most significant advancements when it
comes to aging.

Cell decline

But even if
you optimize all the factors such as sanitation and vaccines, Guarente noted, your
cells will eventually endure damage and lose their integrity.

“The aim is
to try and slow that down,” he said.

Helping that “slowdown” is the philosophy behind Elysium Health. The company released
its first product earlier this year, a supplement called Basis. It’s designed
to help keep cells healthy during the aging process.

Guarente is
one of three founders of the company and serves as its chief scientist.

The supplement
contains two key components that target metabolic repair. The first is called nicotinamide
riboside. This is a precursor of the coenzyme NAD+, which helps cells produce
energy. It can also promote DNA repair and detoxification, among other things.

The second component is called pterostilbene. Similar to the
NAD+ precursor, it also encourages metabolic health.

Much of the development of Basis is rooted in Guarente’s
25-year career at MIT. He is known for his research on isolating the protein sirtuin.